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“Ooooh, yuck, that’s disgusting!” she said, screwing up her face and wincing. My personal alarm bells started ringing. Having worked for many years as a sex positive activist, which is nothing more nor less than advocating that people should have freedom to express themselves in a healthy, positive fashion, I felt dismayed by her reaction.

His words of reassurance were not enough to quell my sinking heart. I didn’t spend years fighting for gender liberation and equality to have my own child react like this. I asked her why she said it, and the truth came out. Her peers at school had convinced her that being gay was “really off”.

It’s not okay in any school system to be racist. Substitute the word lesbian or gay with Muslim or Aborigine and you’d be lambasted. So it was greatly inspiring to me to see a council-run childcare centre in Sydney teaching kids that gay people are normal. The Tillman Park Children’s Centre in Tempe devised a gay-friendly curriculum, using the nationally distributed Learn to Include books, which feature Jed and his dads, and The Rainbow Cubby House to reflect “diverse families”.

Of course, all this freedom has drawn criticism from the conservative elements of society, with the National Party slamming the program on the basis that kids are too young to be exposed to sexuality.

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